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Sunday, 18 August 2013

VIETNAM: Students offered free tuition to study Marxism

The Associated Press17 August 2013Issue No:283

HANOI, Vietnam — Market forces are working against college degrees in the ideology of Marx, Lenin and Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, where the Communist government has resorted to offering free tuition to attract students.

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung recently signed a decree giving free
tuition to students who agreed to take four-year courses on
Marxism-Leninism and the works of Ho Chi Minh, the country’s
revolutionary hero, at state-run universities.

Students have been shunning such degrees because potential employers are
not interested in those programs, said Pham Tan Ha, director of
admission and training at Ho Chi Minh City University of Social Sciences
and Humanities. Degrees in subjects like communications, tourism,
international relations and English are more popular because students
believe “they will have better chances of employment and better pay when
they graduate,” he said.

Under the decree, the state will also pay tuition costs for students who
study certain medical specialties, like how to treat tuberculosis and
leprosy. Ordinarily, they would have to pay about $200 a year for
tuition.

All Vietnamese students must take at least three classes in
Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh studies, but few go beyond that minimum
requirement. Although Vietnam is run by Communists, the country
embraced market-based policies in the 1980s. More than 60 percent of the
country’s 90 million people are under 30. Competition for well-paying
employment is intense among the roughly 500,000 graduates who enter the
job market each year.

“Studying Marxism and Leninism is rather dry and many students don’t
like it,” said Tran The Anh, 23, a fifth-year student. “The number of
students studying these courses is very modest because many of them
believe that it is difficult to find a job after graduation.”

Phan Thi Trang, a pharmaceutical student, conceded that the subjects
might be interesting if she studied them more. But “they are just not
applicable to my daily life,” she said.